kenna (to teach)

kenna ("to teach") is the verb every learner meets early because it describes the very situation they are in — and it hides a small grammatical surprise: it is a double-object verb whose two objects sit in different cases. You kenna a person (dative) a thing (accusative): kenna einhverjum eitthvað. It is a weak verb of the -di/-ði preterite type (the same family as senda and læra), so its past is the predictable kenndi. This page covers the full paradigm, the dative-plus-accusative pattern, the idiom kenna um ("blame"), and the noun family kennari / kennsla.

Conjugation

Class: weak, the -di preterite type (sometimes labelled Class 1; the stem ends in -nn, so the dental surfaces as -di → kenndi). Auxiliary: hafa — ég hef kennt "I have taught."

The core pattern: kenna einhverjum (dat) eitthvað (acc)

This is the one thing to internalise. The learner — the person being taught — goes in the dative, and the subject matter goes in the accusative: kenna börnunum (dat) stærðfræði (acc) "teach the children maths." English uses the same word order ("teach the children maths") but marks neither object, so you have to actively supply the cases.

When the "thing taught" is an action, it appears as að + infinitive (as in kenna okkur að veiða above), and only the dative learner remains an overt object.

Why is the learner dative rather than accusative? Icelandic systematically marks the recipient or beneficiary of an action with the dative — the same case that turns up in gefa einhverjum eitthvað ("give someone something") and senda einhverjum eitthvað ("send someone something"). Teaching is, structurally, transferring knowledge to a recipient, so it joins that family. Once you see kenna as a verb of giving, the dative stops feeling arbitrary and starts predicting itself.

kenna við — "teach at"

To name the institution where you teach, Icelandic often uses kenna við + accusative: kenna við háskólann "teach at the university." More simply, you can give the place with í or á: kenna í grunnskóla "teach at a primary school."

kenna einhverjum um — "blame someone"

A second, idiomatic sense: kenna einhverjum um (eitthvað) means "to blame someone (for something)" — literally "to ascribe it to them." The person blamed is in the dative, and the matter follows um + accusative. This sense feels unrelated to "teach" but is extremely common in speech.

The word family: kennari and kennsla

kenna is the root of two everyday nouns: kennari ("teacher," masc.) and kennsla ("teaching, instruction," fem.). Seeing the verb inside the noun makes both easy to remember — and kennslustund ("a lesson, a class period") is built from the same stem.

Note that kennari inflects like any other -ari agent noun (bakari "baker," leikari "actor"), and the feminine "teacher" is the same word — Icelandic does not have a separate feminine form here, so a woman is also kennari. The verb's own supine kennt doubles as the neuter past participle, which is why you will see íslenska er kennd í skólanum "Icelandic is taught in the school" with the feminine agreement kennd.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• kenna / kennir / kenndi / kennt — weak -di preterite; perfect takes hafa (ég hef kennt).
• The defining syntax: dative learner + accusative subject matter — kenna mér íslensku. This is the point competitors skip.
• The e-stem doesn't u-umlaut: kennum, kennduð (contrast kanna → könnum).
• kenna einhverjum um = "blame someone" — same dative-on-the-person logic.
• Word family: kennari ("teacher"), kennsla ("teaching") — the verb is visible inside both.